14 January 2010

I have recently started reading 'Tuesdays with Morrie'. Morrie's conversations about death and dying brought back to me a conversation I had had with my mother about death, maybe a couple of months before she died. We had the conversation while she was in hospital with a bad bout of infected diverticulitis. She told me...
"When one is very young, death seems so far away and a child is so very scared of death. When one is a youth, a person feels invincible and feels death will never come to her/him. Later, when you move into the real business of living, especially as a family person, you are so busy with the nitty-gritty of living, you don't give death more than a passing thought and there is rarely any time to even feel scared about it. But there comes a time when you are older (she was 89 then), when one welcomes the idea of death and it is no longer something to be scared about, but something inevitable, which is accepted as such and even to look forward to." It really made me see where she was at that moment and certainly gave me a great deal of strength.
I have already reached the age where I no longer fear death.

12 January 2010

There's nothing like interacting with young children, to learn to live in the moment! Being with them is living moment to moment, with the past a blur and the future hazy and totally unpredictable. And when your day ends, all you know is the day is over, but the details of the day completely escape you!
Now the young ones are gone and I am slowly settling into my slow routine. But, as always, I think of this song.....(quoted earlier too)
'After you go
I can catch upon my reading
after you go
I'll have a lot more time for sleeping
and when you're gone
it looks like things are going to be a lot easier
life will be a breeze you know
I really should be glad
but I'm bluer than blue' especially when I find any of their stuff that has been left behind.

Anyway,we'll soon have a visit from another granddaughter--though a short visit, and a short holiday with our whole family to look forward to in March.